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The Senate chamber's echoing reaches roiled with roaring rivers of distress. No eyes on him. None had been for a while now too entwined in their own confusion but burning flesh itched between his shoulder blades. He folded his arms, tugging his robe tighter. How long would it take for this clamouring crowd to emerge from their shock? Bail and Padmé... they knew. He hadn't hidden anything but do they believe me now after he'd reached them on Polis Massa.
But Padmé hadn't arrived yet. The session wasn't meant to start for another hour.
He forced his head up, his shoulders back. Fire and ice as heavy as his metal hand. So hard to look up this is not your place at the rising circles of the Senators and their hovering podiums, so hard to see faces behind shock and red and disbelief.
One fist, metal, clenched within the folds of his robe. I am not afraid! What more could they do, any of them? If he could still stand after Mustafar and every failure that led there then the Senate was nothing. Politicians. Corrupt to a one. Obi-Wan had warned him, Sidious had warned him. As polite as Bail had always been... always a calculation rising through his presence, a weighing up, a judgement. Responsibility, authority, laid in the hands of a single life form — lonely, feeble, greedy — and then left in this arena to shout each other down, tearing throats apart to throw their weight around —
He forced metal fingers apart, forced the air out of his lungs. Can the angel save this Senate too?
No way to know until she arrived.
The air was changing, red and panic giving way to chill blue, darkened skies. A chill his dimming skin matched step for step as he backed out of the spotlight, out of the place where the Chancellor's chair would rise up — or would, had there been a Chancellor present. Or an Emperor. This arena was not his fight, not his cage no more cages and beyond the circle of anxious tookas, familiar light drew closer, glowing rose fretted through with searing worry.
When we last spoke... the last time we held each other... I had time to say everything I wanted — needed — to say.
You didn't, did you?
You wanted to tell me what you'd learnt... and what you'd lost. How much you'd missed me, how much it hurt not to hear a word from me.
All I needed you to know was that I loved you still, that I was proud of you, that if I did there and then it was with joy in my heart that I saw you one last time, grown and bold and still so tender. Still soft, still kind, still loving.
And I couldn't say all those words, but you no longer need words, because you know every flutter in the hearts of those you love.
"Order! Order! We will have order!"
Amedda's voice cracked with strain. Bureaucrats. Standing in for the Emperor. What authority did they have left, with Sidious dead? Did they hear the echoes through the Force, the whispers of a man who believed himself superior to death? How could they? With his back against the service door he'd entered through, he forced himself upright, flesh and fire and forged metal. There would be consequences. Perhaps even for him.
The Senate's roaring red couldn't swallow that trace of rose music. And the gently plucked worries strung through it like torn-up viscera in the melting red of a battleground.
Enough. He lifted his head to the clamour. There was more for them to hear. And who else was left to say it?
"Anakin!"
Two voices, splitting dissonant. One hand on each arm and in the moment it took him to turn Obi-Wan recoiled, gaze falling to his unmarked hand and then rising to the krayt-fire below the frozen skin he'd just brushed against.
"Anakin." Padmé stepped closer, gaze only darting aside for a moment before she sighed and fell into him, flesh-weight against scarred skin and light as Naboo's breeze nonetheless. "Do you know how dangerous this is?"
"What can they do now?" He shook his head. "If Mustafar couldn't..."
"Ani. Can you prove it?" She settled one hand on the side of his face. Scarred skin shivered with cold fire as she sighed. "You'll be considered insane, and that will just confuse the Senate. If there's no body, nothing to prove his death, then there's... there's nothing for it but to wait until the Senate can act."
Fire froze in place but the Force boiled over, rising tides of no swallowing blurring vision, spectral layers of everything he knew, everything he'd seen their Master has fallen stifling the words on his ash-streaked tongue. Weeks gone and that molten landscape's air, it's searing weight on his flesh their Master has fallen and they will not break the chains rolled through him, through the Force that could only find fear and anger among these... leaders of the Republic.
"She's right, Anakin. There's nothing we can do."
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. So who suffered for the fears of these politicians? He turned away, back turned on Padmé though her hand lingered on his arm, back turned on Obi-Wan and his silence. Enough.
But was it enough for you to know, in the end?
They call that place the haunt of the Ghost Enraged, now. Spilled blood, lost water. Such pain... such suffering. How long had you feared that day, Ani?
Something stood between you and acceptance. I don't what the Jedi taught you... it wasn't enough to keep you safe, to keep us safe. We live and die under twin suns burning our skin off our bones, slaves to the last. You escaped, but was it enough?
So many voices in your head, demanding that you listen. Do I sound any different now?
But I'm begging you, Ani. Watching you now...
Please. Come home.
Not his cage, not his fight, no longer his fight but these politicians are weak and they hardly had the sense to end it. Red panic to violet anger to acid disdain and then silence blue like the ice that held him together as he strode forward, cold ripples of the Force snarling together like tangled cords between unsure infant's fingers. What was proof worth when he knew, he knew like these politicians knew their donors, knew their corrupted priorities, knew the price of honesty.
Silent footsteps into the centre of the room, that dangerous space below his feet that would part to let the Chancellor's rise undermine the Senate floor. But Sidious was dead no chains, no cages and unless this Empire built on sand wanted to stay bound to the will of a dead man he had to act.
Blue silence cooled to grey and then to nothing. His voice could only fill this room because it rang through more than the air. It has to be enough.
"You must elect a new Chancellor quickly. The Republic will collapse into disarray even with the Separatists gone if you do not pull together."
Someone else's words, someone else's voice, someone else's calm certainty bleeding through the cracks in the ice that held him together, heat and love and I cannot let her die and decision.
"Without knowing the fate of Emperor Palpatine..." Even with Amedda's podium out of sight behind him, he saw the curl on the Vice Chair's lips.
"You will know."
Red shocks like swelling lava through the silence. Enough. Bursting fire from the ground below them, from below him and Obi-Wan as they'd fought, as he'd burned, as Sidious had come to him
this man is a Sith Lord
as Sidious had knelt beside him, repeated that code, half a code, a code that led to the Force shall free me and then back to Anakin Skywalker
the hero with no fear?
and he'd risen with I am not afraid pounding in his blood and out of order he heard Sidious' dying hisses, the whispers of the dragon in his heart
what is a Sith Lord
but that dragon was dead now, dead and cold like the cracked ice that bled memory into the rising walls of the Republic's leaders.
Memory and ghosts that scowled and cried and screamed in the space beyond the physical.
What love like a mother's? What love like that of a mother forced to carry a child she did not conceive, forced to raise that child alone, unable to give him more than chains reaching deeper in the sand than a krayt dragon will dig?
She was not made for Tatooine's harsh world. Neither is he. In such heat, life forms can only be cold if they mean to survive. And this false ice that covers him, holds him short of the life-heat that has burnt out his heart, is the coldest the son of the suns has ever been.
But to grow cold, like the dragons, is a Tatooine mother's greatest fear. Even if she only watches from a place he dreams of now... there can be no room for anything but terror in what might remain of her heart, her spirit. And perhaps he dreams her cries too, dreams of a call to home — whatever 'home' means to a creature half flesh and half spacevoid — but he knows his dreams have become truth too many times.
It is an interesting thing, love, both in how it is given and how it is received. A mother may pour her heart and soul into building a successful young politician, or teacher, or leader, and succeed only in breaking the youngling. A mother may barely acknowledge that she has a child and yet keep that child hanging on her every pronouncement as if she is the oracle of the Force itself.
A mother; a father; a council of mysterious strangers claimed to be wise, looking so similar to the elders of home; each and every one can love and fail to prove it, or lack love and make it seem a kindness.
No wonder that love drives these life forms to such manic acts of failing sense.
"Anakin! Enough!"
He turned to face Obi-Wan. His Master was pale, shuddering. "It's the only proof we have."
"You will overwhelm them!" Obi-Wan shook his head, stuttering on something he couldn't say before his gaze fell aside. Odd red shadows played on his face, broken reflections of the light in Anakin's flesh. "If you're not careful, you may break them."
His rigid certainty a pillar of green in the Force, conviction of the broken Council, certainty of experience. How would Obi-Wan know? But Anakin nodded slowly, let his shoulders fall beneath his robe as burning memory flickered down to ash grey shock. The shadows across Obi-Wan's face settled to those from the chamber's own lights, bright spots in a sea of dark power twisted into something utterly useless to those it meant to serve.
"It will take more than a new Chancellor to save this Senate."
Red panic made him shiver as he turned his head to look at Padmé, whose gaze stayed up, resolute. "Palpatine allowed the bureaucrats ten more years of unchallenged supremacy after the last attempt to stand against them. There is much of his work left to undo."
"I can't do that for you."
She blinked, gaze falling from the sky of buzzing Senators to rest on him. The Force rippled yellow and blue around her, her lips caught somewhere between stern Senatorial dignity and familiar smile. "I don't expect you to, Ani. If the Senate believes you now... it should make things easier."
Anakin nodded, looking up, letting himself see the Senators. A pensive Togruta seeming not to hear the commentary of aides, a pair of Chiss whose conversation grew more frantic with every twitching gesture, the Pyke Senator and their aides barely seeming to move though some conversation had to be occurring between them.
Mas Amedda's podium drifted down from the heights of the chamber to let the Chagrian glare down at Anakin again. "We will have order in the Senate. Without a proper seat in proceedings... I suggest that you leave now. If Senator Amidala would care to take her proper place..."
A deep breath, air through charred lungs, a scorched throat that cracked with each word as he drew himself up. "The Senate must answer for what it has allowed to occur in the name of defeating the Separatists."
Amedda shuddered back, lethorns shifting around his neck. "Every act of war has been presented to the Senate, and approved where not within the Chancellor's remit..."
"A Sith Lord was made Chancellor. You gave him enough power to call himself an Emperor." No chains, no cages, no Masters. "This Senate has failed. If any of you still believe in the Republic, stand for it."
Though Obi-Wan, two steps behind him, didn't utter a word, Anakin could feel the roiling deep-sea green around the man. But enough was enough. No more of Sidious' lies.
No more scars for the Angel.
"The Emperor is —"
"The Emperor is dead. He has no successor. The Senate must find a way forward for the galaxy." Another deep breath that shook free some lingering ash in his lungs, in his mind, from the fire that had eaten him alive and spat him back out with his flesh flaring torchlike. "You are no Separatist, Amedda. Prove it."
The Vice Chair's sudden spitting fear coloured the air around him yellow as Padmé stepped forward, a delicate hand on Anakin's arm, hot with life through his robe. "The Senate has much to discuss."
Something pale and shallow... relief filled the room, cold panic easing and uncoiling but not fading as a familiar politician's voice took over the conversation amplified by some shudder in the Force held tight by Anakin's own tension. Padmé's grip tightened on his arm for a fraction of a moment. "Perhaps we should begin our session earlier than planned."